1. Technical Field
The present invention generally relates to an apparatus and method for analyzing a golf motion and, more particularly, to an apparatus and method for analyzing a golf motion, which can efficiently implement high-speed image capturing, and can provide more accurate and various information to a user by precisely analyzing motion through the extraction of skeletal information.
2. Description of the Related Art
Golf is a sport in which posture is more important than force. The posture of golf is internalized through muscle memory. To accurately internalize the posture, a procedure for practice and correction must be continuously repeated.
Meanwhile, assistant systems for allowing a correction procedure, which was conventionally performed by the coaching of experts, to be performed via self-training are camera-based golf motion analysis systems which have recently been introduced. Such a camera-based golf motion analysis system is composed of a camera unit for capturing images of golf motion and an analysis unit for analyzing the captured images. The conventional camera-based golf motion analysis system has several problems.
First, some motions in golf swing are performed at high speed, but the conventional camera-based golf motion analysis system is problematic in that some fast motions cannot be desirably captured due to the limited image-capturing speed of the camera. To solve this problem, a golf motion analysis system using a high-speed camera has been developed, but this is limited in commercialization from the standpoint of expense.
A problem attributable to some fast golf swing motions is also found in the analysis unit. In order to provide real-time information to a user, the analysis unit must have image processing performance that surpasses the image-capturing speed of a camera. However, a problem arises in that computing equipment does not have such image processing performance, thus making it impossible to provide real-time information to the user. To overcome this problem, a system equipped with high-performance computing equipment has also been presented, but this system is limited in commercialization from the standpoint of expense and efficiency.
The conventional systems are also limited as to techniques for analyzing the captured images because information extracted by the systems from images is not suitable for motion analysis. For example, such a conventional system analyzes a golf motion in such a way as to recognize the contour line of the human body, extract body parts, and display lines or figures at the positions of body parts specified in this way. However, according to this scheme, there is a limitation in that a body part cannot be accurately isolated, or the bending angle of an arm cannot be exactly recognized in a portion in which body parts overlap each other (e.g. when a front image is captured, a portion in which the arms and the upper part of a body overlap each other at an address posture).
In relation to this, Korean Patent Application Publication No. 2012-0021848 discloses technology entitled “System for Golf Swing Posture Exercise and Correction”.